Page 408 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1160-1090 B.C.] The Wolf on the Fold 345

army crossed the Tigris and the land between the rivers and
laid siege to Babylon, another force marched north along the
Tigris. They pushed the raw Assyrian levies back from the
border, breaking up their rallies with massed charges of heavy
chariotry, and outflanking their lines with swift-moving aux­
iliaries who—surprisingly—rode upon their horses. Many of these
auxiliaries were Persians, the new race from the north, and in
the lands from which they came, it was said, the riding of horses
was a commonplace, and people practically lived on horseback.
Back went the Assyrian forces, until for the first time in
their lives the boys of Assur could see from the walls of their
city, perched as it was on a spur of the hills, the army of an
enemy encamped on the plain beneath.
There was confusion in the city as the nobles and the richer
of the free families hurried to evacuate their children and wives
and possessions to Nineveh, a good seventy-five miles farther
north. Such wealth as could not be sent north disappeared under­
ground, cached in all sorts of unlikely hiding places until the
danger should pass. Amid the confusion detachments of troops
were working to strengthen the fortifications, adding courses to
the walls, building emplacements to cover the gates, and piling
depots of arrows and slingshots at intervals along the parapets.
The boys, organized to assist in fetching and carrying, had the
time of their lives.
But the danger passed. Assur was too strong to be easily
taken, and the Elamites dared not press on to the north and
leave the city, intact and manned by the intact Assyrian army,
across their rear. Symbolically they burnt the crops and cut
down the fruit trees up to the very walls of the city, and then
they retired. But they continued to hold the southern provinces,
with strong garrisons within the cities they had captured. All
the wide plain of the Tigris south of the hills was barred to
the Assyrians. The river merchants, as always, found ways and
means to pass their cargo rafts and boats through the occupied
territories, but they had to pay heavily in bribes and taxes for
the privilege, and freight and insurance charges went up to un­
heard-of heights.
It soon became known that the Tigris was in Elamite hands